(Image source from: businesstoday.in)

The apex medical body of India is intensifying the random sampling of people who would be displaying the flu- like symptoms but is said to not have any history of travel in order to outbreak the zones for determining whether the community transmission is taking place or not. This move has been advised with the increase in the number of confirmed cases of being infected by the deadly novel coronavirus.

Each of 51 Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) laboratories is said to be testing ten such samples on a weekly basis. It has been said that the random sampling has been started on the 15th of March prior to which 20 samples have been picked up by the Indian Council of Medical Research and they have been tested at 13 labs in order to check for the community transmission between the 15th of February to the 29th of February.

Nivedita Gupta who is the scientists for the epidemiology and community transmission, ICMR has said that they have been more aggressive as there is an observed increase in the number of confirmed cases of being infected by the deadly novel coronavirus.

“We thought that in order to rule out community transmission, let’s keep on checking these samples also for the presence for Covid-19,” as said by Nivedita Gupta.

This is said to come as suggested from the reports from other countries regarding the spread of Covis-19 by the people who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic may be responsible for the more transmission that which has been previously thought.

The experts of Indian Council of Medical Research have said that the testing protocol would be revised depending on the situation as the experts aren’t convinced about following the strategy of South Korea where in more recoveries from the deadly novel COVID-19 has been reported than the new infections through the aggressive testing with no lock- downs.

Nivedita Gupta has said that the testing strategy would be changed completely if any positive cases would be found and recorded during the random samples that have been planned to test.

There exists around 35- 40 facilities that are run by the government other than the network of ICMR testing laboratories which would be acting as centers for collection of the samples.

The number of positive cases in India rose to 115 which also includes the two people who have died being infected by the deadly novel coronavirus who were reported to be one from Karnataka and the other from Delhi and also the seventeen foreign nationals.

By Shrithika Kushangi